I began my journey with CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) in 2017, about a year after Salesforce purchased Steelbrick, which became Salesforce CPQ. Salesforce had just moved the Salesforce CPQ Certification from beta to generally available.
Unfortunately, there were no materials on Trailhead, and only a few articles were available online to learn how CPQ works. Luckily for those studying today, there are plenty of resources!
In this article, I will walk you through how you can find Salesforce CPQ resources on Trailhead to learn and study the entirety of the Revenue Cloud (CPQ and Billing). There are other tools out there that can be helpful on this journey and I will include links to those at the end.
Before you begin, make sure you have a CPQ developer instance so that you can play around as you learn. You can get one here: Developer Edition org with Salesforce CPQ.
The Beginner
If you have your Admin certificate and you want to learn more about how CPQ works, here are the Trails and Modules I recommend for you:
- Start with the Salesforce CPQ Basics to get a feeling for the product as a whole.
- I would then move on to the Learn Salesforce CPQ Admin Fundamentals Trail – this is geared for Admins learning CPQ. The order of this Trail is important, so I would recommend sticking to it as closely as possible.
The Intermediate
If you completed the courses in the Beginner section, you are off to an amazing start. At this point, I would advise getting some real-world experience with CPQ, at least 1-2 implementations, and then taking the CPQ exam (if you feel ready, of course). You can learn all about the exam and other ways to prep here: CPQ Specialist Certification Guide & Tips
As an alternative to gaining experience from a company that is implementing CPQ, you can check out my hands-on CPQ practice exercise. It takes you through a real-world scenario and includes examples of questions to think about and assumptions made along the way. I highly recommend this prior to moving on to the next level.
From an intermediary perspective, there isn’t anything else on Trailhead at the time of writing.
The Experienced
Ah, so you have made it all the way to the Experienced level. This means you have completed the above courses, have got your certification, and you have completed at least two implementations of CPQ. If you have done all of that first, congratulations, that is quite the feat!
I would assume you are now looking to expand your knowledge and figure out where to go next – well, in the Experienced category, we move on to the rest of the Revenue Cloud, which is Salesforce Billing.
Salesforce Billing is a relatively new product in the ecosystem, and the companies using it are just beginning to grow. As a result of this, and the difficulty getting some hands-on experience with the product, Salesforce has taken a slightly different route to CPQ. There is no certification (at least not at the time of writing this), but rather, two levels of Superbadges on Trailhead. These badges are not for the inexperienced; they require in-depth Salesforce and Salesforce CPQ knowledge, and ideally, some financial understanding.
The two Superbadges are:
Before you can get started on the Superbadges, two modules will need to be completed (in addition to the two that should have been completed in the Beginner’s section).
For the second-tiered Superbadge, you will also need the Reports & Dashboards for Lightning Experience module completed.
Once you have unlocked the Billing Specialist Superbadge, you will be on your way to learning and proving that you have had some experience on the Billing module. You will need to complete the Billing Specialist Superbadge to unlock the Advanced one. I currently only have the Billing Specialist under my belt, and I won’t lie, it was not easy to pass. It was extremely detailed, and much like when I started my CPQ journey, it does not have a lot of information available right now.
Summary
Overall, today’s Salesforce CPQ instructional world looks very different to 2017, and Salesforce is constantly adding to it. Going through the Trails and Modules that Salesforce provides will significantly help you pick up the fundamentals of CPQ. However, hands-on experience is still something that cannot be rivaled when it comes to understanding this tool in-depth. Hopefully, we will see a Superbadge for CPQ and additional modules for Billing in the future.
Until then, if you are looking for additional resources make sure to check out:
- Trailhead: Salesforce Certified CPQ Specialist Exam Guide
- Salesforce Ben CPQ Specialist Certification Guide & Tips
- Salesforce Chris Salesforce CPQ Specialist Resource Guide